The 2006 preliminary Nebula Award ballot has just been announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). My novella "Inclination" is up there in the novella category.

The preliminary ballot is essentially the Nebula longlist. SFWA members will now vote to narrow the ballot down to five nominees in each category. The resulting final ballot (a/k/a shortlist) will then be voted on in March, with the awards ceremony to be held the weekend of May 11-13 in New York City.

What? What's that you say? There are only four works on the preliminary ballot in the novella category? Well, don't that beat all? I guess that means those stories all advance automatically to the final ballot. Which would make me...

Holy shit! I'm a Nebula nominee again! (Er, somewhat unofficially.) <frantic work-inappropriate happy dance>

Congrats also to our own paulmelko, whose deserving novella "The Walls of the Universe" enjoys the same fate as "Inclination"—all the cooler because our two pieces bookended the April/May issue of Asimov's. Paul, we will tear up Gotham come May.

Big congrats also to bobhowe, whose excellent novelette "Do Neaderthals Know?" makes the prelim, and to planetalyx for "A Key to the Illuminated Heretic"! And to 14theditch for his terrific novel The Girl in the Glass. What other LJers am I missing?